What Next?

Detroit was a burned-out volcano, and although Milwaukee trembled, its authorities hammered down an iron lid that saved the city from massive hurt. Still, there was little peace in the nation's cities. From Providence, R.I., to Portland, Ore., communities large and small heard the sniper's staccato song, smelled the fire bomber's success, watched menacing crowds on the brink of becoming mindless mobs. The only consolation was that, compared with the agony of Newark and Detroit, last week's racial convulsions were more of a threat than a storm.

But what of next week and next summer? To a nation searching for explanations, reassurance and--most of all--a permanent end to violence and the fear of it, Washington offered little real solace. Lyndon Johnson's new commission to study civil disorder was still getting organized, and its chairman, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, doubted that it could even meet a deadline for an interim report next March. In closed session, the group heard a number of witnesses, including J. Edgar Hoover, who repeated previous conclusions to the effect that while outside agitators contribute to some riots, there was still no proof of large-scale conspiracy.

Vulnerable Funds. Nevertheless, Congress seemed more disposed to search for scapegoats than for solutions. The House Un-American Activities Committee received a staff study saying that extremists helped foment some disorders and that Communists produced hate propaganda; the committee promised a full investigation. The Senate Investigations Subcommittee scheduled its own inquiry, while the Judiciary Committee, which was already considering a bill to make itinerant riot rousing a federal crime, heard police officials from seven cities testify that extremists rather than social and economic deprivation cause riots.

South Carolina's Strom Thurmond blamed the disturbances on "Communism, false compassion, civil disobedience, court decisions and criminal instinct." When a Nashville police captain insisted that federal poverty money was paying the salary of a local Black Power agitator--a charge that poverty officials in Nashville and Washington denied--Committee Chairman James Eastland proposed an additional investigation to determine if poverty funds "are being used to promote policies that have a tendency to produce riots."

Appropriations for the poverty program seemed more vulnerable than ever, although Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz said that out of 35,000 youths taking job training in cities hit by riots, only 20 had been arrested. Of the 12,000 students in Office of Economic Opportunity programs in the affected cities, according to Sargent Shriver, only six had been arrested. Senator Edward Brooke pointed out what everyone in

Washington knows, or should know:

"The reason this is happening is because the conditions are there. The conditions are such that it can be set off."

"Inexcusably Slow." But most of Congress was not listening. Rather, it was reading a heavy volume of mail from frightened white constituents who, understandably, want protection. Thus a House bill providing $300 million to aid cities to improve riot-control techniques attracted conservative and liberal support, while the Senate, by a 45-to-43 vote, reduced the appropriation for the Teachers Corps from $33 million to $18 million.

The Administration seemed ambivalent. Hubert Humphrey spoke out forcefully in Boston and Detroit against Congress' "inexcusably slow" action this year on domestic measures and demanded bold new programs to ease the ghettos' anguish. But in Washington, Johnson -- who displayed passionate eloquence in defense of Negroes when civil rights was a more popular cause -- blandly observed that Congress "has carefully evaluated the situation in the nation as it sees it." Explained one Administration official: "Congressmen who are elected by white middle-class voters are in real trouble with our programs.

Their people are mad as hell."

Johnson also tried to downplay the tasteless wrangle he has been having with Michigan Governor George Romney over the introduction of federal troops in Detroit. Romney last week accused Johnson of having "played politics in a period of tragedy and despair." The President at first let Attorney General Ramsey Clark deny the charge, but later, Johnson himself explained the intricacies of ordering federal troops into a local situation. Romney seemed to come out ahead. Opinion samplings by the market research firm of Sindlinger & Co. indicated that Romney's popularity in Michigan exceeded Johnson's after the riot. Nationwide, Sindlinger reported, two-thirds of the public believed that Johnson waited too long before sending in the paratroopers.

City Turned Off. While the finger pointing and maneuvering for advantage dominated the headlines and gave a foretaste of urban violence as a 1968 political issue, officials at all tiers of Government were obviously learning some lessons from the summer chaos. On the front line, Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier showed that advance planning and determined action could contain violence, if not prevent it. Last year Maier quietly gave his police force intensive training in riot control. He also prepared an emergency plan that had the virtue of simplicity: in the event of trouble, he would simply turn the city off with a hermetic round-the-clock cur few, thus isolating rioters, minimizing danger to the innocent, and giving the police and National Guard as much elbow room as they needed. Disturbances started when a group of Negro teen-agers left a church dance and began breaking store windows. Looting, sniping and arson immediately followed.

In just five hours, the first of 4,100 Guardsmen were mobilizing. Soon after, Maier proclaimed the curfew. There were a number of serious firefights with snipers; four people died as a result of the riot and 101 were injured. Maier relaxed the curfew each day by degrees, and the violence subsided after four nights. Urban Coalition. Widespread reliance on martial law is hardly an appealing prospect for the long run. Health, Education and Welfare Secretary John Gardner, a member of an informal Cabinet task force that began meeting during the Detroit riot, is convinced that only programs giving slum residents jobs' education, housing and the other amenities of an affluent society can end race conflict. Gardner also believes that the Federal Government must have the assistance of private industry, and that the Government "needs to come forward with more imaginative ways of inviting their participation."

Some businessmen have already joined the effort. An organization called New Detroit representing all sectors of the community, was formed to assist the city's restoration. The National Urban Coalition, representing industry, labor, local government, churches and civil rights groups, organized and issued an ambitious manifesto for reform. In city halls, state houses, and chamber of commerce offices across the country, officials and businessmen mobilized to provide jobs.

New York Senator Jacob Javits said hopefully that "we may some day be able to regard the riots of this summer as a blessing in disguise which saved us from an even worse conflagration later." The blessing is costly and the disguise almost perfect, but Javits had a point. Even impoverished Negroes, when given a chance by city authorities, are learning from experience. Many of the cities afflicted by riots in 1965 and 1966 have escaped serious trouble so far this year.

Watts is still a far from pleasant place to live, but Negroes have begun to organize work projects and civic activities that give it a semblance of community life. Last week members of some of the more militant black organizations united with N.A.A.C.P. members to quash a riot in Watts before it had a chance to begin. "If Los Angeles does get through the summer," says Mayor Sam Yorty, "it will be primarily because of the hard personal efforts of the majority of Negroes themselves."

Mr. Fat Daddy Webb. Chicago has also escaped serious injury so far this summer, at least in part because three large youth gangs, the Garfield Cobras, the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples, have decided to block violence. Catastrophe might easily have occurred last week when a white storekeeper killed a Negro on the South Side, but the Disciples kept the peace. In Venice, Calif., the newly formed Gangbusters persuaded police to leave a crowd of 500 angry Negro kids, then dispersed the gathering without incident. In Atlanta, a number of "crisis patrols" have been organized that also include ex-convicts. The patrols actively oppose Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee organizers and other trouble makers. This summer the patrols circulated a handbill signed by "Mr. Boxhead Hill, Mr. Bubblegum Ross, Mr. Fat Daddy Webb and Mr. Little Wine Maker Patrick." The headline: WHO

GETS HURT BY RIOTS? WE DO. They speak from experience: some of this summer's peace keepers were last year's rioters.

Necessary and laudable as these efforts are, they mostly represent a pathetically belated and piecemeal approach to one of the gravest social dilemmas the nation has ever faced.

The slums are too large and too numerous, the plight of the Negro too desperate, for the U.S. to pin its hopes for racial calm on police action or hasty economic palliatives. What is needed in addition is proof positive to the Negro that he can find justice and hope in America, and that he can find it soon.

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